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Columbia College. 



Mr. JAY'S 

Centennial Addr_ess, 

DECEMBER 2U7, 1876. 



Columbia College. 



HER HONOURABLE RECORD IN THE PAST, 



A Glance at Her Opportunities in the Future. 



Columbia College 



HER HONOURABLE RECORD IN THE PAST, WITH A GLANCE 
AT HER OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FUTURE. 

A Centennial Discourse 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

Association of the Alumni, 

DECEMBER 21st, 1876. 



BY 

THE HONOURABLE JOHN JAY, 

LATE ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY TO AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. 



V^'^ # 



■•:)) 



NEW YORK: 
Published by the Alumni Association of Columbia College. 

1876. 



f 



ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



The Standing Committee, representing this Incorporation, having 
authorized their Chairman, Frederic de Peyster, LL.D., to com- 
municate with the Hon. John Jay, for the deUvery of an address on 
subject-matters connected with their Alma Mater, it was promptly- 
arranged between them that such address be delivered on the 21st of 
December, 1876, at the theatre of the Union League Club, in the 
city of New York. 

Upon the delivery of the Address at the time and place desig- 
nated, the Association then and there held a Special Meeting to ex- 
press to Mr. Jay the great gratification which he had afforded them. 

Whereupon, Judge Wm. Mitchell moved, and E. F. Brown, Esq., 
seconded, the following Resolution, which was read and unanimously 
adopted : 

Resolved, That the thanks of the Alumni Association of Columbia College be 
and the same are hereby tendered to the Hon. John Jay for his able and eloquent 
discourse delivered before them this evening, and that a copy be requested for 
publication. 

Further resolved. That the Special Committee in charge of this celebration 
are authorized to carry into effect the foregoing resolution. 

FREDERIC DE PEYSTER, 
HENRY DRESLER, 
WILLIAM MITCHELL, 

Special Committee. 



MR. JAY'S CENTENNIAL ADDRESS. 



Mr, President and Gentlemen, Alumni of Columbia 
College : 

You have deemed it fitting that in this Centennial year we 
should unite in commemorating the historic epoch upon which 
our Alma Mater, through the influence of her teachings, 
exerted so marked an influence. 

Recognizing the just and honorable claims of her elder 
sisters, among whom were Harvard and Yale, William and 
Mary, and Princeton and the lesser academies and schools in 
which were educated the men of the Revolution, we cannot, 
as we thank God for the unity, the freedom, and the progress 
of the Republic, forget the prominent part borne by the 
alumni of Kings in securing for us these blessings. 

Their names are associated with the manly and difficult states- 
manship which, under the mistaken course of the mother coun- 
try, led to the Declaration of Independence ; with the courage 
and resolution that marked the conduct of the war, and with 
the peace negotiations at Paris, where our commissioners, sur- 
mounting the difficulties, presented by their instructions on 
the one hand, and the trained finesse of the continent on the 
other, maintained intact the national dignity, and secured for 
our infant Republic, the Fisheries, the North-western boun- 
daries, and the Mississippi. 

They are again identified with the clear-sighted and pro- 
found sagacity that measured the defects of the Articles of 
Confederation, and framed and expounded the principles of 
that National Constitution, which gave us strength at home 
and character abroad ; which, in our civil war, stood a strain 
that the publicists of Europe believed would prove fatal, and 



8 Centennial Address. 

which stands to-day with an elasticity equal to its strength, 
the common law of our common country. 

What time fitter than this Centennial year to recall what 
our Alma Mater accomplished towards the founding of the 
Republic, what she has since done for its advancement in 
learning and law, literature, science, and art : what recently 
she did by her young heroes to save the country from disrup- 
tion and dishonor ! What fitter time to consider the further 
steps it may become her to take in accord with her avowed 
principles, the prominence of her position, the magnitude of 
her wealth, the sacredness of her traditions to keep pace with 
the RepubHc at whose birth she assisted ; and during the new 
century that is opening before us to make Columbia College 
as widely useful to the American people as was Kings College 
to the American Colonies. 

That after a prolonged residence abroad I should have been 
selected to address you on this occasion is an honor which I 
warmly appreciate, and for which I pray you to accept my 
thanks. 

In recurring to the history of Kings and Columbia, I have 
been greatly assisted by the interesting " Historic Sketch of 
the College and its Associate Schools," recently prepared by 
Prof. Van Amringe, at the request of the National Bureau of 
Education at Washington, based upon the sketch by Dr. 
Moore, continued by Rev. Beverley R. Betts, and also by 
the Catalogue of the Governors, Trustees, and Alumni from 
1754. 

DUTCH SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLANDS. 

The foundation of our College does not carry us back to 
the earlier times when the Dutch and Huguenots swayed the 
youthful settlement of New Netherland ; although it would 
seem that nearly a century before the corner-stone of Kings 
was laid, the necessity of commencing an institution of learn- 
ing had been recognized, and the advantages which it would 
confer upon the growing city had been foretold. 

The colony is believed to have been the first in America 
where public schools were established under the wise system 



Centennial Address. 9 

of the Hollanders, who provided everywhere, at the public 
expense, schools for all classes in the ordinary branches. By 
the Charter of Privileges and Exemptions, the patroons and 
colonists were enjoined to make prompt provision for a 
minister and a schoolmaster, and three years afterwards, 
in 1633, arrived the first schoolmaster, Adam Roelandsen. 

In 1656 the attention of the West India Company, as Mr. 
Brodhead tells us, had been called by Domine Drisius to the 
advantage of establishing a Latin school at New Amsterdam. 
In exhibiting to the Amsterdam Chamber, by whom the 
proposition was favorably received, the desire of the inhabit- 
ants to have their children instructed in the most useful lan- 
guages, they suggested that the neighboring places would 
send their children there to be educated, and that New 
Amsterdam might " finally attain to an academy whereby the 
place, arriving at great splendour, your Honours shall have the 
reward and praise." 

A high school was established by this movement, and 
under Domine vEgidius Luyck 'it gained so much reputation 
that children were sent to it from Fort Orange, the South 
River, and Virginia. 

ENGLISH EFFORTS IN NEW YORK. 

The conquest of the colony by the English, in 1664, while 
in many respects a fortunate event for our ancestors in secur- 
ing for them political advantages, the common law and repre- 
sentative institutions, seems to have brought no improve- 
ment in the way of education ; a fact attributable perhaps to 
the circumstance, that in the colonial wars compelled by the 
disputes of European powers, New York became, as Kent 
remarks, " the Flanders of America." 

In 1703 Lord Cornbury, the Governor of the province, 
appears to have proposed to build a college, and the Rector 
and Wardens of Trinity parish were directed to wait upon 
his lordship to know what part of the King's Farm, then 
vested in Trinity Church, had been intended for the purpose. 

Again, in 1729, there seems reason to believe that Bishop 



lO Centennial Address. 

Berkeley had thought of New York as the site of the estab- 
hshment which he had first intended for Bermuda. 

In 1732, the Assembly, by a bill drafted by the Speaker, 
Mr. Philipse, and brought in by Mr. De Lancey, made pro- 
visions for the endowment of a free school for Greek, Latin, 
and the practical branches of mathematics. In 1746 an act 
was passed for raising ;^2,500 by a public lottery for the 
encouragement of learning and the founding of a college. 

By successive lotteries the sum of ;^3, 443 was raised and 
vested in trustees, ten in number, two of the Dutch Reformed 
Church, one a Presbyterian, and seven members of the Church 
of England, of whom several were vestrymen of Trinity 
Church ; and presently Trinity Church offered to them 
" any reasonable quantity of the Church farm which was not 
let out, for erecting and use of a college." 

It is suggested by the author of the " Historical Sketch," 
that the grant of the King's Farm to that corporation had 
been made with a view to the advancement of learning as 
well as religion, and that if such were the case, the offer from 
the Church was in fulfilment, after a lapse of fifty years, of 
the original design. 

THE CHARTERING OF KINGS COLLEGE. 

The apprehension of an approach to a Church Establishment 
within the province caused violent opposition to the plan, and 
delayed the granting of the charter to Kings College until 
the 31st of October, 1754. 

On the 17th of July, in that year, under the presidency of 
Dr. Samuel Johnson, eight students were examined and ad- 
mitted, and among them were the familiar names of Samuel 
Verplanck, Philip Van Courtlandt, Robert Bayard, Henry 
Cruger, and Samuel Provoost. 

The last of these was in after years described as " the easy, 
good-tempered, gentlemanly, and scholarly Dr. Provoost, 
Bishop of New York, a Chaplain of Congress, and a 
welcome guest at the dinner-table of his friends." It 
speaks well for the tuition of this first class, that Bishop 



Centennial Address. ii 

Provoost is commemorated as a scholar, who, in addition to 
his ecclesiastical and Hebrew lore, was familiar with the 
Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian languages : and it 
is said that the Bishop, as a literary recreation in the intervals 
of episcopal duty, had made a poetical translation of Tasso. 

The Charter of the College named as Governors the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and the First Lord Commissioner for 
Trade and Plantations, who were empowered to act by proxy ; 
the Lieutenant-Governor, and Commander-in-Chief of the 
Province of New York ; the Eldest Counsellor of the Province, 
the Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Secretary, 
the Attorney-General, the Speaker of the General Assembly, 
the Treasurer of the Province, the Mayor of the City, the 
Rector of Trinity, the Senior Minister of the Dutch Reformed 
Church, the Minister of the Ancient Lutheran Church, of 
the French Church, and of the Presbyterian Congregation, 
and the President of the College, and with these were joined 
twenty-four of the principal gentlemen of the city.* 

Trinity Church next conveyed to the College corpora- 
tion the land fronting easterly on Church Street, between 
Barclay and Murray Streets, 444 feet, and running west- 
wardly to the Hudson River. This gift was on the conditions 
that the President forever should be a member of and in 
communion with the Church of England, and that the service 
in the College should be taken from the Liturgy, with a special 
collect. The conditions exposed the College to the charge 
of having an exclusive character, and led to an additional 
charter providing for a professorship in Divinity according to 
the doctrines of the Synod of Dort. 

The device adopted for the College seal was the same now 
in use, with the motto In lumine tuo videmus lumen. On the 
23d August, 1756, the first stone of the College edifice, in 

* These were Archibald Kennedy, Joseph Murray, Josiah Martin, Paul Richard, 
Henry Cruger, Wm. Walton, John Watts, Henry Beekman, Philip Verplanck, 
Frederic Philipse, Joseph Robinson, John Cruger, Oliver De Lancey, James 
Livingston, Esqrs., Benjamin Nicoll, William Livingston, Joseph Read, Nathaniel 
Marston, Joseph Haynes, John Livingston, Abraham Lodge, David Clarkson, 
Leonard Lispenard, and James De Lancey the younger. Gentlemen. 



12 Centennial Address. 

College Place, was laid by Sir Charles Hardy, the Governor 
of the Province, 

In May, 1760, the officers and students began to lodge and 
mess in the new building, and in June, the President, in a 
Latin speech, congratulated the Governors, assembled for the 
first time in the college Hall. Among the teachers were Mr. 
Cutting, a thorough classical scholar, from Pembroke Hall, 
Cambridge, and Mr. Treadwell, of Harvard, who was suc- 
ceeded by Mr. Harpur, from Glasgow, as Professor of Mathe- 
matics ; and later Archbishop Seeker sent from England the 
Rev. Myles Cooper, of Queen's College, Oxford, who was 
made Professor of Moral Philosophy, and succeeded Dr. 
Johnson as President in 1763. The College at this time had 
only twenty-four students ; but this number, as the " Historic 
Sketch" remarks, was equivalent, in proportion to the popu- 
lation, to nine hundred at the present time. 

In 1767 a committee who had been appointed to petition 
Sir Henry Moore, then Governor of the Province, made re- 
port that they had obtained a grant of 24,000 acres ; but the 
township was, unfortunately for the College, included in the 
tract afterwards claimed by New Hampshire and ceded by 
New York. A medical school was instituted within the 
College, and three of its professors, Doctors Middleton, Jones, 
and Bard, were active promoters of the establishment of the 
New York Hospital. The character of the College, as we ap- 
proach the beginning of our Revolutionary War, may be 
gathered from a paper left by Dr. Cooper and ascribed to his 
pen, and supposed to have been written about I773- 

After touching on its foundation, the provisions of the 
charter, the great emolument it had received by grant 
from his Most Gracious Majesty George the Third, and liberal 
contributions from many of the nobility and gentry in Eng- 
land, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and 
public-spirited gentlemen in America and elsewhere, the paper 
continues : 

" By means of these and other benefactions the Governors 
of the College have been enabled to extend their plan of 
education almost as diffusely as any college in Europe ; herein 



Centennial Address. 13 

being taught by proper Masters and Professors, who are chosen 
by the Governors and President, Divinity, Natural Law, 
Physic, Logic, Ethics, Metaphysics, Mathematics, Natural 
Philosophy, Astronomy, Geography, History, Chronology, 
Rhetoric, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Modern Languages, and 
Belles Lettres, and whatever else of literature may tend to 
accomplish the pupils as scholars and gentlemen. 

" To the College is also annexed a Grammar School for the 
due preparation of those who propose to complete their educa- 
tion in the Arts and Sciences. 

" All students but those in medicine are obliged to lodge 
and diet in the College, unless they are particularly exempted 
by the Governors or President. 

" The College is situated on a dry gravelly soil, about one 
hundred and fifty yards from the Hudsoi;! River, which it 
overlooks, commanding from the eminence on which it stands 
a most extensive and beautiful prospect of the opposite shore 
and country of New Jersey, the City and Island of New York, 
Long Island, Staten Island, New York Bay with its islands, 
the Narrows forming the mouth of the Harbor, etc. 

"Visitations by the Governors are quarterly. 

" This Seminary hath already produced a number of gentle- 
men who do great honor to their professions, the place of 
their education, and themselves, in Divinity, Law, Medicine, 
etc., etc., in this and various other colonies, both on the 
American Continent and West India Islands, and the College 
is annually increasing as well in students as reputation." 

Dr. Cooper's Tory sentiments, which were openly expressed 
in his writings and conversation, gave offence to the liberal 
party. A threatening letter from Philadelphia was addressed 
to him and to four other gentlemen of New York, in April, 
1775, and on the night of the loth of May his lodgings were 
forcibly entered by a mob,' whom the Doctor, forewarned by 
a former pupil, narrowly escaped, passing, only half dressed, 
over the College fence, to the shore of the Hudson, and 
taking refuge the next day on board an Enghsh vessel in the 
harbor. 

He soon after sailed for England, and his place as President 



14 Centenfiial Address. 

was supplied by the appointment of the Rev. Benjamin 
Moore. 

In April, 1776, the College buildings were demanded for 
the reception of troops, the students were dispersed, and the 
College slumbered during the war, until the spring of 1784, 
when, on the ist of May, it received from the Legislature a 
new charter and its present name, 

ITS INFLUENCE ON THE REVOLUTION. 

The estimate in the paper of Dr. Cooper of the services 
rendered by Kings College in the education of her sons before 
the beginning of the Revolution has been more than con- 
firmed by the mature judgment of succeeding generations, 
after the lives and characters of those alumni had been 
stamped upon the institutions of their country, and had in- 
fluenced by its foundation the destinies of the world. 

It has been well remarked .of Kings College that it may be 
justly regarded as a proof of the influence which liberal studies 
exercise upon the minds of youth in awakening a love of 
liberty — a spirit intolerant of tyranny, injustice, and oppres- 
sion, that notwithstanding the political principles of those who 
administered the government of the College, and despite the 
talents and popularity of Dr. Cooper, a large proportion of 
his pupils were among the foremost champions of liberty in 
the Cabinet and in the field. 

** There were early found," said that distinguished scholar, 
Gulian C. Verplanck, whose classic pen reflected so much of 
honor on our Alma Mater, " there were early found Jay and 
Livingston, Morris and Benson, Van Cortlandt and Rutgers, 
and Troup and Hamilton." And the testimony borne by 
another learned jurist, illustrated by a verse singularly apposite, 
is the more interesting from the fact that he was not an alum- 
nus. I refer to the late Honorable Benjamin F. Butler, for- 
merly Attorney-General of the United States, who said of 
Kings College : 

" The influence of that institution on the literary character 
of the State was truly wonderful ; for though the whole num- 



Centettnial Address. 15 

ber of students educated in the College prior to 1775 was but 
one hundred, many of them attained to great distinction in 
their respective professions, and in public life. In reference 
to them and to their alma mater, the language of the Roman 
poet would scarcely be too strong . 

" ' Felix prole virum 

Lseta deum partu, centum complexa nepotes 
Omnes cislicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes.' " 

The place in American history of the men whose names 
called forth this generous tribute, and the part which New 
York, under their lead, took in the event which we this year 
commemorate, will show with what reason the Attorney-Gen- 
eral spoke of them as a titanic progeny. 

The solid culture of Kings was conspicuous in the State 
papers which Dr. Samuel Johnson, with ponderous pen, at- 
tempted to refute in his " Taxation no Tyranny," and to which 
the peers of England, representing the highest learning of 
Oxford and Cambridge, were pointed by the Earl of Chatham 
as exhibiting a decency, fairness, and wisdom ; a solidity of 
reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion such 
as history had failed to exhibit from the days of Thucydides 
to their own. 

The scholarly training of Kings was conspicuous alike in 
the Committee of Safety, the State Conventions, the Conti- 
nental, and later Congresses, In the National Convention, in 
the framing of the Constitution and its revision by Gouverneur 
Morris, and in the numbers of the Federalist. 

With the commencement of the new government, after the 
inauguration of Washington at Federal Hall, and the assem- 
bling of Congress in the same building, the alumni of Kings, by 
the choice of Washington, lent dignity to the judiciary, the 
diplomacy, and the treasury of the nation, of whose great 
Secretary, Webster said that "he touched the dead body 
of the public credit, and it sprung upon its feet." 

The period in our brief history which has been called its 
heroic age — although American heroism neither began nor 
ended with the Revolution — is one to which we can always 



l6 Centennial Address. 

revert with pride as an epoch whose state papers are studied 
throughout the world for their poHtical wisdom and their 
illustration of American principles, and which are recognized 
by scholars and historians of all nations as models not simply 
of manly statesmanship, but of gentlemanly culture. 

ITS EMINENT ALUMNI. 

While the nation at large was thus indebted to our Alma 
Mater for the part her sons had borne in the establishment 
of the Republic, we should not forget the continuous obliga- 
tions of our own and our sister States for the services of her 
sons. Glance at her roll of alumni from its commencement 
in 17 S^, and your eye is arrested by names like those of 
Bishop Provoost, Philip Van Cortlandt, Samuel Verplanck, 
Samuel Bayard, Anthony Hoffman, Philip Livingston, Robert 
Watts, Anthony Lispenard, and Abraham De Peyster. 
Richard Plarrison, Robert R. Livingston, and Gouverneur 
Morris were all three delegates to the Convention which 
framed the National Constitution. The two latter served as 
ministers to France. Then follow Judge Egbert Benson, 
Gerard Beekman, John Watts, Speaker of the Assembly ; 
Peter Van Schaack, Dr. Benjamin Moore, Julian Verplanck, 
Speaker of the Assembly ; Philip Pell, Dr. John Bowden, 
Major Robt. Troup, afterwards U. S. District Judge ; John 
Wm. Livingston, David Clarkson, Peter Ogden, and Alex- 
ander Hamilton. 

Come down to 1786, after the interval of the war, and 
again you find on every page names of eminent men of large 
influence in their generation, and whose fame is preserved in 
the public records, and in the annals of the bar, the bench, 
the college, and the pulpit, with those who pursued the paths 
of science, the walks of authorship, or the broad fields of 
commercial and philanthropic effort. 

Among the first students was John Randolph of Roanoke, 
and among the first graduates, De Witt Clinton, whose fame 
is identified with the Erie Canal, which linked the ocean with 
the lakes ; and while his services are remembered as senator 



Centennial Address. 1 7 

of the United States, mayor of the city, and governor of the 
state, it should not be forgotten that he assisted to found the 
Historical society, the Academy of arts, and the Orphan 
asylum. 

In 1789 appears the name of John Mitchell Mason, the 
celebrated author and divine, at one time president of Dickin- 
son college, Pennsylvania. He succeeded, in 1792, in the 
Church in Cedar Street, his accomplished father, who was 
noted for his familiarity with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the 
last of which he is said to have spoken with ease and ele- 
gance. 

In 1790 came Samuel Jones, Jr., son of the great lawyer 
of the same name, whose reputation in politics was merged in 
the fame which he acquired as Chancellor of the State, and 
Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, and who is remembered 
as the embodiment of legal lore and judicial courtesy. 

Then follow gentlemen whom many of us remember, and 
among them John W. Mulligan, Thomas Ludlow Ogden, and 
Peter Augustus Jay , of the New York bar; Peter G. Stuy vesant, 
the Reverend Dr. Alexander W. Proudfit, and Philip Mille- 
doller, the last was president of Rutgers college, and one 
of the founders of the American Bible society ; and Judge 
Sylvanus Miller, the Rev. John Romeyn Brodhead, Judge 
David S. Jones, Edward P. Livingston, William Bard, Judge 
Wm. P. Van Ness, David Codwise, Judge John T. Irving, 
Prof. Clement C. Moore, of whose generosity the grounds of 
the Theological seminary are an enduring monument ; and 
among them was a name of more political note — that of Daniel 
D. Tompkins, judge and governor of the state, and vice- 
president of the United States, who entitled himself to eter- 
nal honor by recommending, as governor, the establishment 
of a day when slavery in New York should forever case. 

Among the names with which the century opened were 
those of John Anthon, Henry H. Schieffelin, and Gulian C. 
Verplanck, representing respectively our lawyers, merchants, 
and men of letters ; and then follow a long series of names 
that recall to some of us venerable forms, and to all of us 
varied learning and attainments, eminence in law and letters, 
2 



1 8 Centennial Address. 

political economy, science and arts, and distinguished ser- 
vices in every walk of professional and public life. 

Dr. Nathaniel F. Moore, so long identified with the College 
as adjunct professor, professor, president, and trustee, blend- 
ed with a rare degree of scholarship a loving appreciation of 
tht Grecian dramatists : and he would sometimes linger over a 
favorite passage till he awakened in his class an appreciative 
enthusiasm akin to his own. With sound philosophy he held 
that the object of the College was much more to educate 
than to instruct ; "to quicken the apprehension, to strengthen 
the judgment, to purify the affection, and to refine the taste ;" 
to develop and train the mental powers ; to open the door 
for the acquisition of all knowledge, and to secure for the 
moral and intellectual powers of youth that proper culture, 
that " going hence, they may be qualified to enter with ability 
on any walk of life, or to engage with vigor and success in 
those professional studies of which the more peculiar object is 
to, furnish and instruct the minds that previous education 
shall have formed." 

Then follow the familiar names of Gouverneur Kemble, and 
John L. Lawrence, with those of Wm. M. Price and his bro- 
ther Stephen, so prominently connected with the criminal law 
and theatricals of New York; and we are arrested by that of 
Dr. John McVickar, professor of moral and intellectual philos- 
ophy, belles-lettres, and political economy. His impressive 
tones, the purity of his diction, and the classic severity of his 
criticisms will not easily be forgotten by the appreciative 
and grateful pupils of that admirable teacher, and those who 
were so happy as to know him at horne will remember also the 
charm of his conversation and the beauty of his character 
and life. 

Then follow the names of Dr. John W. Francis, whose 
skill in medicine was blended with so genial an eccentricity 
and a genuine enthusiasm for our Knickerbocker ancestry ; 
of Judge Robert Emmet, of Peter Van Brugh Livingston, of 
Prof. James Renwick, for many years our great authority in 
science, and whose lecture-room recalls pleasant hours ; of 
Dr. Berrian, the rector of Trinity, a post of eminence and 



Centennial Address. 19 

power conferred by the bounty of Queen Anne such as no 
other parish can equal, and which few episcopates can rival ; 
of Hugh Maxwell, so charming in society and so powerful at 
the bar ; and of Dr. Henry Vethake, who carried his fine 
attainments in natural philosophy to Rutgers, Dickinson, and 
Washington colleges and the University of Pennsylvania. 

Of the Bishops and Clergy we observe the names of Bishops 
B. T. Onderdonk, of New York ; of Jackson Kemper, of the 
North-west; of Manton Eastburn, of Massachusetts; of Henry 
John Whitehouse, of Illinois ; of Drs. William Creighton and 
Henry Anthon, who represented often and prominently the 
opposing views in our Diocesan Convention ; of Philip Edward 
Milledoller, Cornelius R. Duffie, Wm. Edward Wyatt, Gregory 
T. Bedell, Marcus S. Hutton, Matthias Bruen, John Murray 
Forbes, Benjamin J. Haight, and others living and dead who 
have ably illustrated the culture of Columbia in so many 
different churches. As we turn the pages of the catalogue, 
among the familiar names are those of Peter D. Vroom, 
governor of New Jersey and minister to Prussia ; of John 
Slidell, illustrating the principal, if not the only case, where an 
alumnus of Columbia was a prominent leader of the late rebel- 
lion ; of James W. Gerard, conspicuous at the bar, and later 
in his devotion to public education, and whose lively humor 
will live in tradition ; of Ogden Hoffman, whose silvery tones 
and persuasive eloquence yet linger in our ears ; of James F. 
De Peyster, whose honorable career of usefulness has so 
recently closed ; of Dr. Charles Anthon, whose vigorous 
frame and decided tones corresponded with his scholastic ac- 
quirements, his intellectual vitality, and indomitable industry, 
which left him without a rival in his mode of teaching the 
classics, and which commended his name and his innumerable 
text-books and classical notes to the approval of English and 
German scholars. 

The name of John L. Stephens will be remembered as the 
intelligent and adventurous explorer who threw so much light 
on the antiquarian remains of Central America, and encour- 
aged a scientific research into the relics of our prehistoric times, 
which some inquirers believe will result in the discovery that 



20 Centennial Address. 

our so-called new world is perhaps the oldest in its primaeval 
civilization. 

Among the Alumni up to 1820 were Drs. John R. Rhine- 
lander, Wm. Smith Rogers, and John Brodhead Beck ; Judge 
James J. Roosevelt, and H. J. Anderson, the skilled Professor 
of Mathematics and Astronomy, whom Bowditch pronounced 
the acutest analyst in the country. Among the living are 
our honored friend, Frederick De Peyster, whom we greet 
to-night, and under whose genial auspices flourishes the 
New York Historical Society ; John C. Hamilton, author of 
the life of his illustrious father ; Wm. Beach Lawrence, the 
learned commentator on the law of nations ; James Lenox, 
the enlightened founder of the library which will endear his 
name to future generations ; Dr. William Betts, Professor of 
Law, and Trustee ; and those honorable judges, Lindley Mur- 
ray Hoffman, and William Mitchell. Before leaving the cata- 
logue of the College, which opens so interesting a retrospect of 
society in New York, let us glance for a moment at the list of 
officers and of honorary graduates. Besides those already 
mentioned, we find among the officers the names of Lewis 
Morris, Matthew Clarkson, Rufus King, Oliver Wolcott, Col. 
Nicholas Fish, Dr. Sam. F. Jarvis, James Kent, Dr. Jona- 
than M. Wainwright, Philip Hone, and Dr. Gardiner Spring. 
Among the honorary graduates, from the times of Myles 
Cooper and Governor Tryon, the College has enrolled many of 
our scholars, divines, statesmen, authors, and men of science. 

Among the Bishops have been Doctors Samuel Seabury, 
of Connecticut ; Chauncey Moore, of Virginia ; James Kemp, 
of Maryland ; John Cross, of New Jersey ; Thomas C. Brown- 
well, of Connecticut; Philander Chase, of Ohio; L. S. Ives, of 
North Carolina ;. Wm. R. Whittingham, of Maryland ; Geo. 
Washington Doane, of New Jersey ; Stephen Elliott, of Geor- 
gia, with the reverend Doctors Wm. B. Sprague, Thomas 
House Taylor, Francis L. Hawks, that rare exemplar of elo- 
quence and genius, and William Augustus Muhlenberg, on 
whose venerable head are showered blessings by the mindful 
pupils of his earlier years and the grateful beneficiaries of his 
fruitful age. 



Centennial Address. 21 

Among lawyers and statesmen there have been, Edward 
Livingston, Langdon Cheeves, Thomas Addis Emmet, 
Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, J. R. Poinsett, Hugh S. 
Legare, George Griffin, Albert Gallatin, John C. Spenser, 
John Duer, and Abraham Lincoln. 

Among our men of science, Wm. James McNeven, Horace 
Webster, and Richard Somers Smith. 

Of our great authors, Washington Irving, James Feni- 
more Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Fitz-Greene Halleck, 
and William H. Prescott ; and chief among our soldiers is 
the honored name of Winfield Scott. 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE UNDER THE NEW CHARTER. 

Returning to the history of the College, the State, at the 
close of the war, passed an Act, ist May, 1874, ratifying the 
original charter, and changing the name of the corporation 
from Kings to Columbia ; but the act of ratification excepted 
such clauses as required the taking of oaths and subscribing 
a declaration, and which rendered a person ineligible to the 
office of President of the College on account of his religious 
tenets, and prescribed a form of public prayer to be used 
in the College. 

We are thankful to believe that these provisions, which were 
suggested by the change in our political institutions, have not 
impaired the Christian character of the College as portrayed 
by the Honorable John Chambers, in 1755, when, on behalf 
of the Government, he expressed the hope that their conduct 
would " convince the world that they had nothing more at 
heart than to promote the glory of God, the true Protestant 
religion, and a generous education of their youth in the lib- 
eral arts and sciences." 

The Board of Trustees to-day includes the venerable 
Bishop of the Diocese, the Rector of Trinity, the Rev. Dr. 
Haight, the Rev. Dr. Hutton, and lay-members of the Epis- 
copal, Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed Churches, whose 
characters may inspire the country with entire confidence 
that with every eff"ort to advance the generous education of 



22 Centennial Address. 

our youth, and to keep pace with the progress of modern 
science, there will be blended a firm resolve so to conduct the 
College that, in the words of Judge Chambers, more than a 
century ago, it will " promote the glory of God and the true 
Protestant religion." Never certainly was there greater occa- 
sion than at the present time for Columbia to exhibit to the 
world her distinctive Christian and Protestant character. On 
the one hand, the adherents to the doctrines of the Roman 
Syllabus are attempting to arrest the progress of huriian 
knowledge even in our public schools. On the other hand, 
infidelity and atheism, cloaking with the professor's garb the 
narrowness of their attainments and the arrogance of their 
assumptions, are insinuating in the name of science that the 
Word of God is belied by his works, and that those works 
prove his non-existence. While such things undoubtedly 
verify the ancient Scripture touching those who say that there 
is no God, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that Chris- 
tian faith in many circles, and in some where youth are taught, 
is wavering and uncertain. A recent writer has even ven- 
tured a remark which, question it as we may, is still suggestive, 
that " Christianity is becoming disintegrated over wide areas, 
and the old pagan sentiment reappearing, like some old class- 
ical poem on the surface of a palimpsest from which the later 
medijEval superscriptions are being removed." 

Whatever changes time may bring to our Alma Mater, God 
forbid that she shall ever become indifferent to that Prot- 
estant faith, to sustain which in the advancement of learning 
Kings College was originally established, and upon the main- 
tenance of which, as we are warned alike by philosophy and 
history, must depend the purity of the national morals and 
perhaps the continuance of the national life. 

It would seem by the catalogue that the important chair, 
so ably filled by Dr. McVickar, as Professor of the Evi- 
dences of Natural and Revealed Religion, has remained 
vacant since his death in 1868, and unless its duties are per- 
manently assumed by the President, the Trustees may perhaps 
find in the recent attempt to make modern discoveries in 
science minister to infidelity, a cogent reason for filling that 



Centennial Address. 23 

chair with one fitted by his character and attainments to illus- 
trate by each new discovery the divine truth that " All his 
works do praise Him," and to impress the students of Colum- 
bia with the conviction that the unbelieving naturalist or 
geologist, like the undevout astronomer, is mad. 

The new Trustees of Columbia met in May, 1787, when Dr, 
William Johnson was elected President, and it appears that 
at this time the number of students was thirty-nine, of whom 
a part boarded and lodged in the College, and that the yearly 
income of the institution was then about ;i^i, 330. In 1792 
a second act of the Legislature made some appropriations to 
cover losses suffered by the war and expenses incurred by 
alterations in the streets ; and in the same year the Medical 
School was established, and several new professorships in the 
College, the faculty including Dr. Wilson, Professor of the 
Greek and Latin ; Dr. Kunze, of the Oriental Languages ; 
Dr. Mitchell, of Natural History and Chemistry, and M. de 
Marcelin, of French. Mr. James Kent was appointed to the 
chair of Law, which he filled for five years, and it was on his 
reappointment to the same professorship, in 1823, that he 
delivered, in course, his celebrated Commentaries, which are 
now recognized as authority throughout the civilized world. 

In 1801 the Rev. Dr. Wharton succeeded Dr. Johnson as 
President, and on his resignation Bishop Benjamin Moore 
succeeded to that office, the chief mannagement of the Col- 
lege being with Professors Kemp, Wilson, and Bowden. 

In 1809, on the recommendation of a committee, headed 
by Rufus King, the Trustees raised the requisites for admis- 
sion, and extended the system of education, and in the next 
year the number of students who matriculated was 135, and the 
Trustees, in reporting to the Regents that " Columbia College 
not only retains her ground, but increases her importance," 
observed that they had laid " a broader and stronger basis 
for a sound and thorough education than (as they believe) has 
hitherto been found in these States." 

In 1 8 14 the Legislature gave to the College some twenty 
acres of ground, known as the Hosack Botanic Garden, and 
containing about 260 lots, between the Fifth and Sixth 



24 Centennial Address. 

Avenues and Forty-seventh and Fifty-first Streets. The 
original grant was accompanied by conditions which, in 1819, 
the Legislature removed. The appointment of Professors 
McVickar, Moore, Renwick, and Anthon ; of Chancellor Kent, 
in 1823 ; of Signor Lorenzo da Ponte, of Italian Literature, 
and of Mr. H, J. Anderson, of Mathematics, in 1825, were 
followed in 1830 by the appointment of Dr. Sam. H. Turner 
to the Chair of Hebrew, and of Mariano Velesques de la 
Cadena to that of Spanish Language and Literature. In 
1843 there was added, under the bequest of Frederich Geb- 
bard, a Professorship of German Language and Literature. 

In 1857 the College was removed to its present position, 
bounded by Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, the Fourth and 
Madison Avenues. The old College Green, with the site of 
its venerable edifice, associated with the memories of a cen- 
tury, was divided by a street, which was presently lined 
with costly warehouses and devoted to the purposes of com- 
merce. 

It is a matter for regret that some of the stately sycamores 
which adorned the College Green were not preserved, although 
the change of grade might have rendered it a little incon- 
venient. Those venerable trees had an historic interest from 
the fact which, when a boy, I heard from the lips of Judge 
Benson during one of his visits to my grandfather at Bedford, 
that those trees were carried to the green by himself. Jay, 
Robert R. Livingston, and, I think, Richard Harrison, and 
planted by their own hands. 

In 1854 a report was made by a committee of the Trustees, 
suggesting important changes in the sub-graduate studies 
during the Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years, with 
adaptations to the future studies, sub-graduate and post- 
graduate, and a co-ordinate mainly scientific course to occupy 
two or three years, with the Schools of Philosophy or Phi- 
lology, of Jurisprudence and History, and of Mathematical and 
Physical Science, into one of which the students were to enter 
at the beginning of the Senior year. 

In 1858 the proposed post-graduate course was opened, with 
the assistance of Prof. James D. Dana, in Geology and Natural 



Centennial Address. 25 

History, Prof. Arnold Guyot in Physical Geography and 
kindred subjects, and Mr. Geo. P. Marsh on the English 
Language. "The time," remarks the author of the " Historical 
Sketch," " seemed not to be ripe for the proper support by 
the public of the scheme, and it was relinquished after one 
year's trial." 

About this time the professorships held by Prof. McVickar 
were divided, and the College secured the valuable services of 
Prof. Charles Murray Nairne in the Chair of Moral and Intel- 
lectual Philosophy, of Dr. Francis Lieber, who has left a more 
than national reputation, to that of History and Political 
Science, and of Prof. Charles A. Joy to that of Chemistry ; 
and with these gentlemen were Prof. McCuUogh in Physical 
Science, Prof. Hackley, who was succeeded by Prof. Peck, in 
Astronomy, and Prof. Charles Davies in Mathematics. 

THE ROLL OF HONOUR. 

At this period in the history of the College, the catalogue 
points us to " the Roll of Alumni who served in the Army 
and Navy of the United States, 1861-1865." 

As Kings College gave the noblest and best of her sons to 
the work of serving the National Independence and laying 
deep and strong the foundations of the Republic, so Colum- 
bia, after the lapse of two or three generations, points with 
loving pride to her roll of honour inscribed with the names of 
those who, in the recent hour of treason and of danger, offered 
their fresh lives in defence of their country. 

To them and their brave associates belongs the glory of 
having saved the Republic from overthrow by the armies of 
Rebellion in the South, aided and abetted by treason as 
deadly but more cautious in the North, by the unfriendly 
aristocracy of England, the hostile imperialism of France, and 
not least by the ubiquitous power, spiritual and political, of 
the Church of Rome, whose Sovereign Pontiff recognized the 
slave Confederacy in his letter signed Pius IX.. "given at 
Rome, at St. Peter's, the 3d day of December, 1863, and of 
our Pontificate 18." 



26 Centennial Address. 

That letter disclosed the policy towards our Republic of the 
Holy See, whose influence is felt alike in the politics of the 
old and the new world, and with that blow aimed at the life 
of the nation and the allegiance of its Roman Catholic citizens, 
we could understand the remark of Dupin, when he spoke of 
the sword, " dont la poignee est d Rome et la pointe partoiU" 

The soldier students who throughout the North hastened 
to the field at the call of Lincoln, from the College, the Law 
School, and whatever their pursuits, furnished an example of 
devotion to truth, and honour, and freedom, and country, from 
which the wisest statesmen and the greatest scholars can 
draw lessons of faith and heroism that touch the American 
heart more deeply than the most stirring memories of Greece 
and Rome. " Who," said Judge Hoar, speaking of the brave 
dead of Harvard, " can think of those fair and honorable lives, 
and of the death which these young soldiers died, without a 
new sense of what is worthiest in human pursuits, a stronger 
devotion to duty, a warmer ardor of patriotism, a surer faith 
in immortality ? " 

On the roll of Columbia you will find names of which it 
might be said, as an intelligent foreigner said of our own 
Gen. James S. Wadsworth, that "he was a noble incarnation 
of the American people." 

Among the first is the name of Major-General Philip Kear- 
ney, of the Class of 1833, who, despite the loss of an arm in 
Mexico, took his place as Brigadier-General of Volunteers in 
May, 1 861, and fell, the idol of the army, at the Battle of Chan- 
tilly, Sept. II, 1862. Then come names well known in New 
York : Swords, Devan, Cooper, Astor, Le Roy, Potter, 
Moneypenny, King, Cambreleng, Knox, Blunt, Hoffman, 
Thurston, Ward, Pell, Thorn, Trenor, Kirkland, Marsh, Mor- 
ris, Parker, Woodford, Hosmer, Babcock, Bacon, Clark, Cox, 
Cutting, Hyslop, Suydam, Ulshoeffer, Davies, Massett, Park- 
man, Smedburg, Lydig, Totten, Jay, Reynolds, Slipper, 
Barry, Brown, Cullen, Emerson, Fearing, Hurry, Jenks, Mil- 
ler, Pomeroy, Tracey, Benkard, Boyd, Haight, Hillyer, Mit- 
chell, Ray, Rice, Russell, Tucker, West, Churchill, Fuller, 
Gillespie, Hopkins, Jackson, Marvin, Thayer, Boardman, 



Centennial Address. 27 

Eagle, Lacombe, Lockwood, McDonald, Schemerhorn, Ter- 
rett, Appleton, Floy, McClellan, Valentine, James, McVickar, 
Peck, Seymour, Smith, and Wilson, with others perhaps 
equally familiar to you. Some of them returned from the 
battle-field to the homes which they had assisted to save 
from invasion, while others sleep the beautiful sleep of the 
brave who have died for their country. 

We have now reached a significant and most interesting 
period in the history of the College, when within a few years 
it established a Medical Department, and the two schools 
which have added so largely to its usefulness : the Law School 
and the School of Mines. 

THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT. 

The Medical School, established by the Governors of Kings 
in 1767, continued until 1813, and in i860 " the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York " was con- 
stituted "the Medical Department of Columbia College." 
" The union," says the " Historical Sketch," " is complete in 
the single respect that the united authority of the two insti- 
tutions is necessary to the conferring of degrees, all the 
diplomas bearing the signature of the President of Columbia 
College with those of the Faculty of Medicine. The school 
has an independent Board of Trustees, and its financial affairs 
are entirely distinct from those of Columbia College." 

The Trustees and Faculty of the Department present 
names of the highest reputation ; the lectures, cliniques, and 
examinations are highly commended, and the number of 
students in attendance has increased from 260, in 1860-61, to 
410, in 1875-76. While it would seem clear that the Presi- 
dent of Columbia, in signing the diplomas, which are recog- 
nized by the Royal College of Surgeons in England, pledges 
Columbia College for the thorough education of those who 
receive them, it is not quite apparent, from the " Historical 
Sketch," what opportunities of verifying the facts thus cer- 
tified belong to the Trustees of Columbia. It may perhaps 
be regretted that this point has not been made so clear as to 



28 Centennial Address. 

leave no room for the supposition that the College would 
have assumed to guarantee the sufficiency of the medical 
course, the skill of the professors, and the proficiency of the 
pupils in a department governed by independent Trustees, 
with whom the College appears to have neither a controlling 
power nor a co-ordinate authority. Of the 327 students in 
attendance in 1870-71, but 6'}^ are reported to have been 
Bachelors of Art, so that the preparatory education of many 
is likely to be found defective. 

"The profession of medicine," as President Eliot has well 
remarked, " demands a mind well stored, and a judgment 
well trained ; a profession in which ignorance is criminality, 
and skill a benediction ; a profession which penetrates the 
most sacred retreats of human love, joy, and sorrow ; and 
deals daily with the issues of life and death." 

The prestige of the College and the interest of the com- 
munity alike demand that the Medical Department shall be 
as complete as possible in its laboratory, apparatus, and all the 
proper accessories that may be called for in our day by the 
progress of science and discovery throughout the world ; and 
whenever the system may obtain, as in Germany, of the 
professors being paid by the fees of the students, the advan- 
tages thus gained in the increased efforts of the teachers, and 
the enlarged number of the pupils, would seem to enhance the 
responsibility of the governors of the institution, in seeing 
that diplomas are issued only to those who, on their theses 
and examination, are found fitted to enter upon the practice 
of the profession, 

THE LAW SCHOOL. 

In 1858 it was wisely resolved to give to the Department 
of Law a new activity and efficiency, to impart to the study of 
jurisprudence a more distinctly scientific character, and to 
combine with a real preparation for practice at the Bar, in- 
struction in History, the Science of Government, and Inter- 
national and Constitutional Law. 

Dr. Theodore W. Dwight was placed at the head of the 



Centejmial Address. 29 

department, which, under his skilful management, has already- 
achieved a great success, and with Dr. Dvvight were associ- 
ated Dr. Francis Lieber and Prof. Charles M. Nairne. In 
i860 there was added Dr. John Ordronaux, as Professor of 
Medical Jurisprudence, and 1875 George Chase, Esq., as 
Assistant Professor of Municipal Law. The situation of the 
School in Lafayette Place gives the students the opportunity 
of consulting the law department of the Astor Library, 
which is rich in foreign works, especially in collections of 
French cases ; in addition the library of the Law School con- 
tains over 4,000 volumes. 

The course of study includes the various branches of Com- 
mon Law, Equity, Commercial, International, and Constitu- 
tional Law, and, since the death of Professor Lieber, has been 
temporarily filled with special lecturers. 

Two moot courts are held every week, and three law 
clubs have been formed among the students, known as the 
Dwight, Barnard, and Columbia Clubs, and a series of 
prizes have been established in the department of municipal 
law. The advantages of such a system over other modes 
of obtaining a legal education are obvious and important, and 
as the students come from Maine to California, and from as 
far southward as Cuba, with some from foreign parts, Eng- 
land and Sweden, the influence of this branch of the College 
promises to extend its solid and careful culture in all direc- 
tions. 

It is said to have already improved the average standard 
of education among those admitted to the Bar of New York, 
from the excellence of the instruction received under the 
supervision of its accomplished professors. 

A question has been raised as to the wisdom of the law of 
the State which permits graduates of the Law School, after 
having been in attendance for eighteen months, five of which 
would be a period of vacation, to practice in all the Courts of 
the State, on receiving the College diploma. It has been 
urged that the briefness of the period thus required for 
preparation seems hardly consistent with the dignity of the 
profession, or with the rights and interests of the community ; 



30 Centennial Address. 

and that it serves to give color to the suggestion, by no 
means compHmentary to the College or its Law Department, 
that law students are attracted to Columbia, not always by 
the desire to obtain the most thorough legal education, but 
in some cases to secure admission to the Bar by the shortest 
and easiest method. 

It has been further suggested that it might be wise and 
proper for the College to confer on this subject with the Law 
Association, which is so honorably endeavoring to elevate 
the standard of the Bar, and with the concurrence of that 
body to recommend to the Legislature an extension of the 
term of study to three years for admission to the Supreme 
Court, even if the rule were allowed to stand as it is for 
practice in inferior Courts. 

It has also been suggested as desirable, that the examination 
on which the law diplomas are awarded should be in part 
upon written papers, with a dissertation on a given subject, 
as already provided for in the adjudication of prizes ; a matter 
of slight importance to the community, compared with the 
conferring of degrees that will invest the student with the 
right to practice in the Courts and to invoke the confidence 
of the public. 

Prof. Dwight, in his introductorj^ law lecture, in Novem- 
ber, 1858, quoted the old Lord-Chancellor Hatton on the 
great sin and fault of admitting to the Bar unmeet young 
men, and that to such men should be committed our rights of 
goods and persons ; and he added : " It is unncessary to say 
one word as to the evil inflicted on the community by an 
ignorant Bar. But it ought to be said that the leading mem- 
bers of the profession are themselves partly responsible for 
its existence. The standard of admission to, practice has been 
placed too low." 

The students in the Law School have increased from 35, 
in 1859, to 573, in 1876, and of this number 243 were College 
graduates. 

All will agree that Columbia, which, by her distinguished 
judges and jurists and the Commentaries of Kent, has been 
so honorably associated with the history of American Law, 



Centennial Address. 31 

should have a Law School of the highest character, and one 
that will raise the standard of legal scholarship and profes- 
sional ethics, not only for this city and this State, but for the 
entire country. The suggestion officially made, that a third 
year, or post-graduate course, will soon be organized, justifies 
the expectation, that under the very able management of 
President Barnard and Dr. Dwight, which have made the 
Law School what it is, it will attain to still larger excellence, 
and include in its course lectures upon the Roman Law and 
on the Civil and Criminal Procedure of Modern Europe, to 
be delivered from time to time, perhaps by some of the 
eminent publicists connected with foreign universities. 



THE SCHOOL OF MINES. 

Following closely upon the establishment of the law school, 
came, in 1863, a plan from Mr. Thomas Egleston, a graduate 
of the tlcole des Mines, of Paris, for a School of Mines. Mr. 
Egleston, according to the " Historic Sketch," " so far interest- 
ed the Trustees of Columbia College in it, that they consented 
to make it, under certain conditions, a branch of the College 
— the essential condition being that the school was not to be 
a burden upon the funds of the College, but was to rely for 
its maintenance upon the liberal contributions which Mr. 
Egleston had been encouraged to expect from friends of 
science in the city of New York." 

Mr. Egleston was appointed Professor of Mineralogy and 
Metallurgy in 1864. Dr. Barnard, who was chosen President 
on the resignation of Dr. Charles King, soon after Mr, 
Egleston's appointment, comprehended the excellence of the 
plan. "It was chiefly," says the "Historic Sketch," "his 
enlightened spirit, foresight, judgment, and devotion that 
established it upon a firm basis." Gen, Francis L. Vinton, 
also a graduate of the Ecole des Mi^tes, of Paris, was made 
Professor of Mining Engineering, and later, Prof. C. F. 
Chandler, of Union College, was appointed Professor of 
Analytical and Applied Chemistry, 



32 Centennial Address. 

The progress of the scheme, under the conditions imposed 
upon Prof. Egleston, was attended by embarrassments which 
were overcome by the influence of the President ; and the 
Trustees fitted up a building on the College grounds which, in 
1874, was superseded by a larger one, fitted with every con- 
venience. Originally the school was to embrace three years, 
with two regular courses open to students, on the conclusion 
of which was to be conferred the degree of Engineer of 
Mines, or Bachelor of Philosophy. The present plan has a 
preparatory class, during the first year, with five parallel 
courses of studies, viz. : 

1. Civil Engineering. 

2. Mining Engineering. 

3. Metallurgy. 

4. Geology and Natural History. 

5. Analytical and Applied Chemistry. 

The modern languages are taught in the school so far as 
may be necessary to enable the student to read French and 
German scientific books with facility. Several gentlemen, 
headed by the late lamented George T. Stroilg, assisted to 
equip a laboratory. Professors Joy, Peck, Van Amringe, 
and Rood, of the academic department, lent their aid to make 
the course of instruction complete, and the school, which 
commenced the 15th of November, 1864, with twenty-five 
students, had, by the report for 1875-6, 222 students; and 
the library has already 10,000 volumes. 

Of the Columbia School of Mines, a writer in the North 
American Revieiu for January, 1871, said that the lectures 
delivered in New York "had the value of original examina- 
tion into the sciences they discuss ; " and in alluding to the 
immense labor required to carry on a mining school, and the 
heterogeneous character of its operations, remarked that of 
this the Columbia school was a good example. 

" Where there was not a specimen, a crucible, or a furnace, 
six years have sufficed for the collection of seventy-five thou- 
sand specimens, illustrating Geology, Mineralogy, and Metal- 
lurgy ; of models of furnaces, machines, crystals, geometrical 
sections ; of a library of three thousand volumes ; of labora- 



Centennial Address. 33 

tories for assay and for chemical operations, which are larger 
and better than those of any mining school in the world. . . . 
Among all the most famous schools in the world, there is 
not one so well supplied with apparatus, and not one where 
all the departments are carried on with the same equal care. 
Remarkable as it may seem, no school in Europe, unless that 
of St. Petersburg is to be excepted, can compare with this in 
the appointments, either of its chemical or its assay labora- 
tories," 

The President and Trustees may well rejoice in the grand 
success thus achieved in a branch of science which each year 
becomes of larger importance to the nation in the rapid de- 
velopment of their metallurgic wealth, their engineering 
skill, and of chemistry in its application to the arts. 

To those gentlemen we all owe our thanks, and also to Dr. 
Charles A. Joy and his associates, whose learning and ex- 
perience have advanced and perfected the scheme, and to the 
generous donors who have assisted it by their gifts. Among 
these are Dr. John Torrey, Mr. Wm. E. Dodge, Jr., Mr. F. 
A. Schemerhorn, Mr. D. Willis James, Dr. C. R. Agnew, 
Mr. S. L. M. Barlow, Mr. R. P. Parrott, Mr. Morris K. Jessup, 
Mr. C. Lanier, and Mr. I. Crearer ; and with these should be 
named the late lamented Gouverneur Kemble, John Caswell, 
and William H. Aspinwall. To Prof. Thomas Egleston are 
due the respect and gratitude of the College and the country 
for the science, the skill, the devotion, and the courage which 
are associated with his name as the founder of a school that, 
in its infancy, has crowned with new honors this ancient in- 
stitution, and which promises to confer so much of benefit 
upon the American people. 

THE ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT. 

Returning to the Academic Department, permit me to recur 
for a moment to the report made on the 24th of July, 1854, 
during the able Presidency of Dr. Charles King who in 1849 
had succeeded to the chair which had been filled in succession 
by Presidents Harris, Duer, and Moore, by a committee of 
the Trustees who had been appointed to consider and report 
3 



34 Centennial Address. 

on the subject of the removal of the College, a change In the 
collegiate course, and the establishment of an university sys- 
tem. It would seem that they had asked and received the 
advice of Professors McVickar, Renwick, Drisler, Hackley 
and Smidt, and this incident may justify a passing allusion to 
the fitness and wisdom of such request for the careful views of 
the members of the faculty on questions connected with the 
course, discipline, and improvement of the College. The 
Board has thus the advantage of the experience and sugges- 
tions of the professors on subjects with which their duties have 
rendered them familiar. The professors, on the other hand, 
may the more recognize the dignity and responsibility of their 
posts when they are called on for advice, not alone as regards 
their own departments, but in matters that concern the 
scope and dignity of the College. 

It does not appear whether the opinions given by the 
professors on this occasion were printed. In one or more of 
our 'most advanced colleges, the annual report of the Presi- 
dent is published, accompanied by a report from the Dean of 
each department. 

The interest taken by the alumni of Columbia, and other 
scholarly citizens, in the choice of the best measures for in- 
augurating promptly and effectually the new course approved 
by the Trustees, may perhaps incline the Board to welcome 
and facilitate the inteUigent discussion of a scheme in which 
both the city and the country are so deeply concerned. 

The report of 1854 touched upon two points connected 
with the question how the College could attract students 
from a distance. 

The first related to the proposition to remove the College 
to the country. The Committee admitted that this plan 
would have certain advantages, to some of which they alluded ; 
but, on the other hand, they were impressed with the fact 
that Columbia seemed to be intended as a home college for 
New York, and from this and other considerations they 
thought the city College ought to be maintained, and, they 
added "should the time come when the enlargement of the 
income should authorize, or when the public demand authen- 



Centennial Address. 35 

ticated by proper endowments should require it, another and 
associate College might perhaps be established in the coun- 
try, and precautionary measures taken." 

The second related to the question of rooms and commons. 
The Committee said: "In relation to the inquiry whether 
rooms and commons, or rooms alone, for resident students 
should be provided, the Committee think that in establishing 
the College at Botanic Garden, provision should be made by 
rooms and commons for students from a distance, and that 
with proper measures for domestic comfort, and a liberal but 
scrutinizing discipline, the advantages of the College may be 
far more extensively diffused than could otherwise be done ; 
but they do not think that either rooms or commons would 
be required for resident students, except such as may choose 
to avail themselves of it." 

The Committee, after presenting their plan for a post-gradu- 
ate course, remarked : " The whole reasoning of the Commit- 
tee is based on two single propositions : first, that it is the 
duty of the College to give as good an education as possible ; 
and, secondly, that it is its duty to extend the benefits of 
that education to as large a number as possible." 

On the 1 2th of January, 1857, the Board of Trustees 
directed the Committee " to bring in the first statute to com- 
prehend the whole scheme of college and university instruc- 
tion contemplated by their former report." 

Among the changes adopted were improvements in all the 
chairs, and a reduction of the price of tuition nearly one-half. 

Mr. Betts, in his address of 1858, remarked that the reve- 
nues of the College were still limited, and declared "the 
Trustees propose to add, from time to time, every necessary 
appliance for the advancement of learning to the extent of the 
means enjoyed by them." 

In the steps taken during the twenty-two years since the 
date of that report for carrying out the scheme of elective 
studies and a post-graduate course, it does not appear that 
anything has been done towards the establishment of an as- 
sociate college for students from a distance, nor towards the 
provision of rooms and commons, with a proper measure of 



36 Centennial Address. 

domestic comfort and supervisory discipline for the accom- 
modation of such students in the city. 

At Harvard, addional apartments have been recently fur- 
nished for 400 students, and the Thayer Club supplied in the 
dining hall a wholesome and abundant table at $4 per week. 

According to the catalogue for 1875-76, the Academic De- 
partment, now called the "School of Letters and Science," 
had of officers 21, and of students 172, divided as follows : 
Seniors 41, Juniors 29, Sophomores 54, Freshmen 48. 

The students in the schools of medicine, law, and mines 
amount to 1,189, ^^^^ the number of academic students re- 
ported in some of our larger colleges is larger, as, for instance : 

Harvard, founded in 1638 637, 

Yale, " " 1700 .517, 

Brown University, founded in 1765 224, 

Princeton, founded in 1748 369, 

, Amherst, " " .1821 268, 

Cornell, " " 1868 506. 

In view of the prestige of Columbia, especially in the clas- 
sics, and of the high character of her Facult}^, headed by Dr. 
Drisler, the accomplished successor of Moore and Anthon, the 
stationary number of her students, amid advances on the part 
of some other colleges, would seem to confirm the soundness of 
the view intimated by the Committee of the Trustees, that the 
want of rooms and commons prevent the extensive diffusion of 
the advantages of the College. Had the College simply kept 
pace with the progress of the city since 17^3, when the popu- 
lation was 24,000 and the students 24, the academic depart- 
ment should now show 1,000 students; and if their number 
had increased in proportion to the increase of income since 
1787, when it had 35 students and an income of iJ'i,330, the 
students would now be told in thousands. It is a suggestive 
fact that at both those earlier periods the College grounds, 
extending to the Hudson and looking to the Narrows, had a 
retired and rural character ; that the students invited from 
distant parts lodged and boarded within the grounds, which 



Centennial Address. 37 

were closed at ten o'clock, and that if the Trustees shall now 
resume that plan it will be simply the revival of the usage 
of Kings before the war of the Revolution and of Columbia 
after its termination. That usage seems to imply that the 
doctrine did not then obtain that the College was to be main- 
tained simply as a city College ; and a glance at other institu- 
tions may show that if Columbia had dwarfed her usefulness 
abroad to secure New Yorkers at home, she had not succeeded 
in that expectation. While Columbia has 172 students, a few of 
them from other States than New York, Harvard shows from 
our State 99, and Yale 140, so that these two single institu- 
tions have 6j more New Yorkers than Columbia herself 

Whatever decision shall be come to in regard to the site 
of the College, in city or in country, the sound principles 
laid down in the report to the Trustees, on which they 
resolved upon a complete system of collegiate and university 
education, that the college is bound to furnish the best possible 
education to the largest number, forbids the College to adopt 
the narrow motto of Pro urbe in place of the appropriate 
legend Pro Deo et pro patria. 

In considering, even in the most general manner, the eleva- 
tion of Columbia from a home college to a complete univer- 
sity, towards which it has made a certain progress in its 
new schools, we cannot confine our view to its probable 
influence on this city in making New York— already the 
commercial centre — the central home of learning, science, 
literature, and art, which are fast tending to the national 
metropolis. 

It is a matter of wider scope that concerns the country, 
and is closely associated with the great question of the edu- 
cation of the masses, which, in the recollection of the young- 
est of our number, has risen to a height of dignity and mag- 
nitude, such as it has reached in no other land and in no 
previous age. 

The conviction has been forced upon the large body of 
observant and thoughtful Americans that not only may 
there be found in our Republic men whose avarice and ambi- 
tion are as insatiate and as unscrupulous as in the old world, 



38 Cefitennial Address. 

but that our popular institutions, with unlimited suffrage, 
when combined with ignorance and crime, offer for their pur- 
poses dupes and tools with which to undermine our freedom 
by fraud and stratagem, or to assail it openly by war. 
Our own experience in this city has taught us that the olden 
extortions of feudal tyranny and imperial avarice were 
light by the side of the unexampled burthens of taxation, 
imposed by municipal corruption under the forms of law. 

Hence the prevailing belief that the integrity of our institu- 
tions can only be preserved by making education universal, 
and giving to it a higher and more ennobling tone ; and this 
may account for the extraordinary efforts in this direction 
during the last two decades. While the population from 1850 
to 1870 increased some seventy per cent., the amount ex- 
pended in education in 1870 was six times the amount 
expended in 1850. 

The East and the West tell on this subject the same story. 
In 1872, Connecticut raised $10.95 per child, while ten years 
before she raised $3-54, and the amount of gifts and legacies 
for learning during the last decade was greater than that of 
the previous half century. 

In Iowa, the aggregate annual expenditure rose from 
$761,000, in 1863, to $4,229,000, in 1873. 

Europe has been immensely impressed — and of this some- 
thing could be seen at Vienna — with the intelligent zeal of 
our people in behalf of education, the land grants by the 
general Government, the munificent liberality of individuals, 
and the excellence of our school-buildings and text-books. 

Now if the quick instincts of our right-minded and intelli- 
gent countrymen, scattered through the continent, teach 
them that the battle for our rights and those of our children 
— if we would prevent the downfall of the Republic by finan- 
cial jugglery, political stratagems, and bloody war — is to be 
fought in the public schools ; and if they are striving, even 
though it be sometimes with a certain crudeness, but with 
an unparalleled devotion and generosity, to raise the standard 
of those schools, and to elevate the millions of the people, what 
help have they not a right to expect from those who have the 



Centennial Address. 39 

shaping of the academies and colleges of the land, and who 
know, as we know, the intellectual and moral power which 
a single institution like Kings College brought to the cause 
of the Revolution and the construction of the Republic. 

The simple rule presented for the guidance of Columbia, 
that she is to give the best education to the largest number, 
gives to the far West and South an interest in her plans, and 
brings to view the relation not to be forgotton between the 
common school, the high school or academy, the college, and 
the university, as they lead upward, each in turn acting as 
a feeder to the next in succession. The common schools 
furnishing a share of their pupils to the academy ; the acad- 
emy preparing their choicest boys for college ; the college 
raising high its standard and opening its doors only to those 
who can pass a thorough examination, conducting them partly 
by a prescribed course, partly by one, where the student, 
freed from the trammels of the school-boy, exercises his 
own election, looking to his own scheme of life, until there 
remain for him at the close of the academic course the schools 
of medicine, law, and mines, or the post-graduate course in 
the classics and philosophy, where our ambitious students 
may train themselves, as thoroughly as in Europe, as future 
professors, with the aim of scholarly renown, and in a {q\n 
years represent the advanced culture and science of Columbia 
in the chairs of colleges throughout the Republic. 

The first question that naturally arises, and on which seems 
to have hinged, for some years, the apologies for delay in 
carrying out the plans of the Trustees — the question of finan- 
cial ability, would seem to be satisfactorily answered by the 
tables given in the " Historic Sketch," and which afford a basis 
of comparison of the means at the disposal of Columbia, with 
those enjoyed by the largest colleges of the new world and the 
famed universities of the old. 

It is stated in the new edition of "Appleton's Cyclopaedia," 
although the fact does not appear from the '' Historic Sketch," 
that the Trustees, in 1872, purchased nearly ten acres near 
1 60th Street, on Washington Heights, extending from the 
Boulevard to the Hudson River, for $375, 000, and it has 



40 Centennial Address. 

been suggested, with what accuracy is unknown, that 
it is proposed to remove the College to this spot from 
what President Barnard calls " its present inadequate 
and unhappily located site." If this be so, the purchase 
may indicate the final resolve by the Trustees not to re- 
move it from the island, nor to establish an associate college 
in the country for students from a distance, but to carry 
it to a point within the city where it will be for a time 
comparatively free from the distractions of a metropolis, and 
sufficiently near to the associate schools. The situation might 
also be convenient for boating, in which the students have so 
honorably distinguished themselves, swimming and all gym- 
nastic exercises and atheletic sports which the mens sana 
in corpore sano imperatively demand in a collegiate educa- 
tion. 

; In selecting a site, as in their plans for the erection of the 
college buildings, the Trustees, in view of one removal already 
had within twenty years, and another in prospect, might well 
strive in their plans for permanance in this world, as the 
teachings of the College have regard to eternity in the next. 
Those who are familiar with the ancient colleges of Oxford, 
their chapels and dining-halls, and trees and gardens, will 
not be disposed to undervalue the dignity which quiet 
permanence confers upon institutions of learning, nor 
the effect of such classic associations upon the mind 
and character of the student, and even upon the casual 
visitor. 

The financial condition of Columbia, as set forth in its an- 
nual statement to the Board of Regents, is given in the 
"Historic Sketch:" 

The College buildings and grounds, includ- 
ing the buildings erected for the School 
of Mines, are valued at $530,000.00 

Its property in College Place, Park Place, 
Murray, Barclay, and Greenwich Streets, 
will probably yield an income of five per 
cent, on 2,128,260.00 



Centeiutial Address. 41 

Its Botanic Garden property, 260 lots be- 
tween Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and 47th 
and 51st Streets, yields a net income on. . 2,041,786.80 

The total revenue during the last year from 
all sources, including tuition fees and di- 
plomas, was 301,087.64 

The total expenditures for the same year, 

were 208,106.95 

The unexpended balance, was 92,980.69 

The total debt of the College, was 41,240.00 

If the report be correct that the Law School and the 
School of Mines promise to be self-supporting, or nearly so, 
there would seem to be a revenue of about two hundred 
thousand dollars, apart from the fees of students, available 
for the academic department, and the enlargement of the 
library, which numbers 17,339 volumes. The libraries of 
some American colleges are reported as follows : 

University of Virginia 37,000, 

Amherst 28,000, 

Dartmouth 46,000, 

Brown University 86,000, 

Yale (since increased) 65,000, 

Harvard 155 ,000. 

The library of Harvard is said to have received 45,000 
volumes during the last ten years, and the fact that in 
1874 it received five gifts and bequests, amounting to 
$54,000, suggests the thought that, with a proper fireproof 
building and arrangements by which alcoves might be dedi- 
cated to special gifts, Columbia, on making known the de- 
partments where she needed assistance, would meet with a 
ready and generous response. 

The income of Columbia compares favorably with that of 
the great colleges at home and abroad. The total invest- 
ment of Harvard, for instance, in 1873, was stated at 
$2,765,110, of which $1,854,372 was productive, yielding 
an annual income of $133,676, and the students in the aca- 



42 Centennial Address. 

demic department had increased from 413, in 1865, to T^J^, in 
1876. 

The income of the nineteen colleges at Oxford is conjec- 
turally stated by Mr. Emerson, in his paper on Universities, at 
;^i 50,000. Of some of the German universites we have the 
exact figures, as, for instance, of Leipsic, said to be the 
wealthiest of the universities of Germany. It has an income 
of its own of 103,000 thalers, and its expenditures for 1873 
amounted to 314,683 thalers, the balance being met by State 
appropriation. The university had that year 399 professors 
and 2,940 students, of whom 2,870 had matriculated. Of the 
students 45 were credited to North America : some of them, 
as Mr. Hart tells us, men " well up in the thirties, and even the 
forties," who had played at home the role of professors, and 
M'ho had gone to Europe for the perfecting culture which 
they had not been able to find in America. 

Leipsic, as you remember, is one of the ancient universi- 
ties, founded in 1400, three and a half centuries before 
Columbia. But if we look at Berlin, which was founded in 
1809, when Columbia had flourished for half a century, we 
find that Berlin had, in 1873, a total of 3,573 students, of 
whom 1,754 were matriculated, and 1,816 non-matriculated 
students attending lectures. 

It may be a fact worth noting, in reference to the most 
advantageous site for Columbia, should that question be still 
open, that the increased cost of living at Berlin during the 
last ten years had placed it at a disdvantage as compared with 
Gcittingen, Heidelberg, and Bonn ; although a further reason 
was given in explanation of its decline. It was said that its 
most distinguished professors were a " crochety, opinionated, 
and illiberal set in their ways, and unsympathetic ; that 
they hold too much aloof from the spirit of the times, and 
that while the unverisity needs an infusion of new blood, the 
rising celebrities find it more advantageous to accept a call to 
Leipsic, Munich, or Strasbourg, fwhere the expenses are less 
and they can exert more influence." 

I should add that I am told that within the past year or 
two Berlin has added to her force many of the ablest of the 



Centennial Address. 43 

professors of Germany. The University of Strasburj^, 
opened since the war, has already a corps of eighty instruc- 
tors. 

Upon the steps necessary for the success of the academic 
department, hght is thrown by the reports of President 
Barnard, whose views are confirmed by those of President 
EHot, of Harvard, and by the progress of that institution 
under his watchful and judicious management. 

Indeed, the facts presented touching the decline of Ameri- 
nan colleges generally, and the exceptional advance of Har- 
vard, present together an argument of unusual force. 

Our collegiate course, founded upon the English model, 
appears to have become more and more unsuited to the con- 
ditions and requirements of American life, from the omission 
to adapt it to " the changes that," in the words of Dr. 
McVickar, " have come over all our institutions, political, 
religious, social, and financial." The rising generation, con- 
scious that " in education lies the making of the future," has 
instinctively felt the existing system, with its monotonous drill, 
to be narrow, incomplete, and unsuited to their needs ; and 
despite the advance in our primary education our collegiate 
classes have not kept pace with the increase of population. 

It has been well said that what the colleges now need is to 
recover the confidence and favor of the people by supplying 
the elective education which they require. Harvard, with a 
wise appreciation of this fact, has adapted herself to the 
demand for more freedom in the choice of studies. Presi- 
dent Barnard attributes its recent success to the abandon- 
ment of the invariable curriculum, and sees in this movement 
of the oldest collegiate institution of the country an indica- 
tion of the policy to which, as regards modern languages and 
literature, all colleges must come. 

The elective system, then, which the Trustees have already 
recognized and partially adopted, may be regarded as an 
essential feature of the new system, and for the efficient con- 
duct of this system President Barnard declares that rooms 
for the students and professors are " quite indispensable." 

The School of Mines has introduced the study of French 



44 Centennial Address. 

and German as essential in its varied departments. At Harvard 
they are made part of the academic course, and in Cokimbia 
German is an optional study with each class, but French 
seems to have no place and no professor. 

In looking to the adoption of a complete university course, 
it may be well to examine the working of the plan adopted 
by Harvard in raising the standard of admission until she is 
one year in advance of the usual college curriculum', and the 
average age for admission has advanced from seventeen and 
a half to eighteen and a half years, while that of Columbia is 
a little over seventeen. 

With such an advance, giving an additional year for pre- 
paration, with perhaps a Columbia preparatory city school, 
might not a moderate knowledge of the rudiments of 
French and German, such as the reading of easy prose 
and some slight progress in conversation, be advantageously 
placed, one or both, among the requisites for admission to the 
Freshman class, especially when we remember that the earlier 
these languages are studied the more easily they are acquired ? 
Locke thought that when a boy came to be a man he could 
easily get Greek for himself, but he was clear upon the point 
that " as soon as a boy could talk, French should be talked 
into him." Max Miiller, too, says of the comparing of words 
in the three languages, Latin, French, and English, that " an 
hour a week so spent would save ten hours in teaching French 
and Latin." 

The question naturally arises, where are these boys to be 
prepared for Columbia, and to this the facts stated by Presi- 
dent Eliot, and the statistics given by President Barnard, 
supply an answer. 

Harvard is furnished with scholars by preparing schools at 
home ; in various parts of New York ; in Erie, Cleveland, and 
Chicago ; St. Louis, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Washington, 
Baltimore, and Philadelphia. 

The academies of the State of New York, and the schools 
of corresponding grade in most of the Northern, Middle, and 
Western States, give instruction in as large a range of sub- 
jects as the colleges themselves, but with a freedom of choice 



Centennial Address. 45 

not yet attained in the Colleges. This feature helps to ex- 
plain this rapid multiplication of these academies : and of the 
modern languages they teach French, German, Italian, and 
Spanish. Many of them are schools of great merit and effi- 
ciency, resembling perhaps the free classical schools of Eng- 
land, which produced such men as Chief-Justices Holt and 
Coke, Cromwell, Newton, Gibbon, Paley, Akenside, Eldon, 
and Stowell. President Barnard states, that of 30,000 pupils, 
reported in 1869 as attending the academies in this State, 
over 9,000 were engaged in pursuing classical and higher 
English studies, and that the average age of these was sixteen 
years and four-tenths, while in 39 of the academies, with an 
attendance of 2,287 students pursuing advanced studies, the 
average age was above eighteen years. Here, then, are the 
schools by which Columbia College, when raised to an uni- 
versity, would be fed, as the German Gymnasia feed the uni- 
versities of the Empire. And if we are ever inclined to boast 
of our educational progress in America, we may remember 
that in Germany there are from five to six hundred schools oi 
the first order, instructing 1 50,000 pupils on the higher plane 
of education. 

The success of the elective and university scheme seems 
likely to depend not so much upon prizes and scholarships — 
however useful these may be in certain cases, and with refer- 
ence to the post-graduate course, as upon the always just 
appreciation of what our country and the age demand, and 
the skill exhibited in meeting that demand without disturb- 
ance of the order and repose of the institution. 

History teaches us how much individual genius can accom- 
plish in this direction, as in the case of Sturm, whose school 
at Strasburg flourished for forty-five years from 1538. It 
attained an European reputation with thousands of scholars, 
all speaking Latin, including Poles, Portuguese, Spaniards, 
Danes, Italians, French, and English. Sturm became the 
schoolmaster of Germany, and his services were recognized 
by the Sovereigns of Denmark, France, and England, 

The rapid rise and reputation of the Schools of Law and of 
Mines, shows that Columbia is not wanting in those splendid 



46 Centennial Address. 

abilities, that breadth of view, that soundness of judgment 
and power of execution which have suddenly made her name 
facile princeps among the schools of mines throughout the 
world, and which has extended the fame of her Law School 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

The reports of Dr. Barnard allude to the groundlessness of 
the fear lest the changes in the collegiate course might be 
attributed to a diminution of esteem for the noble and ven- 
erable languages of Greece and Rome, and lest there was to 
be an unconditional surrender of the ancient learning, alike 
as to its intrinsic and its educational importance. "Those 
languages," said Dr. Barnard, " are not dead, but living. 
. . . They live in our own tongue, they live in our literature, 
they live in our philosophy, they live in our history, they 
live in our jurisprudence." 

If, however, there are hundreds of students who desire the 
culture of Columbia, with Latin, French, and German, and 
who to secure these with perfectness, under the rule non midta 
sed ■tnnlHini, must in part forego the Greek, is their claim for 
that reason to be denied ? Look at the great men, famous in 
letters and art, who, while they impressed the world with their 
learning, wit, wisdom, and eloquence, were strangers to the 
classic tongue of Homer and Sophocles, of Plato, Herodotus, 
and Xenophon ! They have abounded, not only in England 
and America, but in France, as in the case of Corneille, 
Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Buffon. 

But if it be a matter of regret that so many of our youthful 
countrymen who are not intended for the Church, think that 
in a familiarity with the French and German — the one with its 
stores of science, the other with its wealth of literature — they 
will find more that they require in a thorough training for 
their several professions than in the classic works of that far 
antiquity which was the youth of the world, may not con- 
solation be found by the most enthusiastic Hellenist in the 
thought, that a complete university course will give to all stu- 
dents who desire it, an opportunity of continuing their classi- 
cal studies in that further course under the most accomplished 
masters, and of thus becoming familiar with the severe 



Centennial Address. 47 

beauty of the Grecian antique, in history, poetry, and the 
arts, to an extent that is now impossible in the halls of 
Columbia, but which is essential to the perfection of classic 
scholarship in America ? 

Our scholars have been apt to recur admiringly to the per- 
fection attained at English universities in writing Latin verse, 
and amongst the most loving and graceful tributes to the 
classic culture of Oxford was one recently pronounced by our 
venerable Bishop, as Honorary Chancellor of Union Univer- 
sity. But Latin verse-making has been treated with indiffer- 
ence, or something more, as Mr. Farrar tells us, by Cowley, 
Milton, Bacon, Locke, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Maccaulay, 
Thirlwall, Ruskin, and Mills ; and Mr. Wilson, of Rugby, com- 
plains of the unsatisfactory results of the classical schools of 
England, and " the astonishing ignorance of Greek and Latin." 

Is the case different with ourselves ? How many of us 
recur to Homer, the fountain-head of poetry and of art, 
"radiant," in the words of Felton, " with the beams of the 
early Grecian morning," although Dr. Schliemann would in- 
troduce us to an earlier day, with the same ease and confi- 
dence with which we read that father of poetry, as he 
reappears with the antique features of our own Bryant, and 
touches again his heroic harp in the musical accents of our 
own tongue ? 

One feature which the country has the right to demand 
from Columbia, as justified by her historic record and her pre- 
sent position, a feature which new and feeble colleges find it 
difficult to command, is thoroughness in every department 
and in all the appointments of the College ; and the higher 
that standard of excellence, the fairer and wider her reputa- 
tion, the more certain and permanent her success. 



Gentlemen of the Alumni, some twenty years have passed 
since the Trustees of our Alma Mater pronounced for a com- 
plete university course, and during those years the voices of 
Lieber, who though dead, yet speaketh, of Barnard, of Joy, 
and others of the faculty and alumni, have with one accord 



48 Centennial Address. 

agreed that America demands an university, the "highest 
apparatus of the highest modern civilization." 

The completion of the century naturally awakens our deep 
affection for Columbia, and our hope that some decided steps 
may be at once taken towards the accomplishment of that 
beneficent design. 

Whether the new site for the College thus to be expanded 
is to be ten acres within the city limits, or a thousand or more 
in the country, with stream, or lake, and woods recalling 
the academy of Plato, and the leafy shades of Tusculum and 
of Oxford, may we not ask that that question be decided 
now ? That the first decade of the new century may see the 
rise of bur Alma Mater as the nursing mother of hundreds of 
ingenuous youths, where she has hitherto counted them by 
tens, shedding her generous culture and gracious influence 
over our great city, and greater State, and beyond its bounds, 
upon the vast Republic, at whose birth a century ago, her 
sons assisted. 

Kaipov ^vwQi was the advice of the Grecian sage. Know 
your opportunity is the American maxim of to-day. For 
the delay in carrying out the scheme adopted so long ago, 
there has been urged repeatedly a want of means ; but 
Columbia, with her present rent-roll, can no longer plead in 
forma pauperis. Her law school and her school of mines, to 
which her Trustees may well point with honorable pride, 
show, with a significance not be overlooked, what can be 
done by wise, scholarly, and resolute action, in contrast with 
what may be lost by fruitless deliberation. 

Let us cordially offer to the Trustees our willing and ready 
aid for the accomplishment of this work. Let us trust that 
the success achieved in these schools may soon crown the 
rising University ; and let us hope, Deo juvante, that the 
future of the College, so far from recalling the ancient saying, 
Deliberat Roma perit SaguntiLin^ will justify the more inspir- 
ing legend, Her children acted, and Columbia was saved. 




































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